BUTTE VALLEY — Butte College President Kimberly Perry sees potential in Assemblyman Dan Logue's plan for students to earn a college degree within 18 months of graduating from high school.

The plan is more or less a sketch at this point. The Republican assemblyman from Loma Rica introduced Assembly Bill 51 to establish a pilot program to explore the feasibility of an 18-month degree.

Logue met with Perry and officials from Sacramento State University, Chico State University, Yuba College and Yuba City High School last week in Sacramento.

It appears more meetings on the idea will be held, Perry said in a phone interview Wednesday. Logue proposed setting up a "continuing working group," and Perry said she volunteered to be on it.

"I think if I could typify the feeling (at the Sacramento meeting), we were all intrigued by the idea that high school students can earn a significant amount of college credit while in high school," she said.

Alexander Gonzalez, president of Sacramento State, "is definitely on board with exploring ideas in the bill," said Kim Nava, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento campus.

Asked for his opinion of Logue's bill after it was introduced early this month, Chico State President Paul Zingg told this newspaper it did not seem workable.

Neither Zingg nor his chief of staff, Karla Zimmerlee — who attended last week's meeting with Logue — could be reached for a comment on Wednesday.

Perry said she didn't think that under Logue's proposal students would take any fewer courses than they do with traditional degree programs. A difference is that they would do a significant amount of college work while they were still in high school, she said.

There is evidence that this approach works, she said. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a "middle college" program in a few places in California.

"They took underprivileged and under-performing high school students so that by the time they graduated from high school, they would be as close to AA degrees as possible," she said. The students attended school on college campuses, where they took both high school and college courses.

Evidence shows these programs helped the students succeed, she said. She added Butte College has a somewhat similar program called College Connection.

Logue said he wanted the pilot program to focus on what are known as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs. That's because there are so many jobs in these fields that people from overseas are often recruited to fill them, he said.

Logue said the degree programs he's proposing should be as affordable for students as possible. He suggested a maximum cost of $10,000.

In its initial form, AB 51 calls for establishing a pilot program in three parts of the state. According to the bill, it would involve the following entities:

Chico State University, Yuba College, Butte College and the Butte County Office of Education.

Long Beach State University, the Long Beach Community College District, and the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

California State University, Stanislaus, the San Joaquin Delta Community College District, and the San Joaquin County Office of Education.

Logue said he'd like to see a high school from Butte County participate in the pilot program.

Staff writer Larry Mitchell can be reached at 896-7759, lmitchell@chicoer.com, or on Twitter @LarryMitchell7.